Hacker News Reader

Comment by your-nanny | Hacker News Reader

I have heard that in Japan a "foreigner" might live in Japan for forty years, be fluent in language, culture, and custom, and yet still called a foreigner and not Japanese; I have heard likewise that that is not the case in Taiwan, ie to be Chinese is to act Chinese. What do you think?

View on HN

If you look sufficiently Asian (in American sense), then in China you're Chinese until proven otherwise. Inability to speak Mandarin/Cantonese/whatever is no proof you're not Chinese :) If you speak English, they'll look you up and down with contempt(presumably to see if you have any signifiers you're from Europea or something) :D Well, this is just my anecdotal experience as someone from a -stan country visiting China.

Probably, partly why they (along with Koreans) prefer white Europeans with barely sufficient English over Asian (or even black) English majors born and raised in America.

No idea about Taiwan but I know Asians in the US (a country where 99.1% of the population are descended from immigrants) who complain about getting the question "but where are you REALLY from" a couple times too often. I think this is a problem in any place with any kind of homogeneity, which Japan has a lot of.

As a white guy, I've occasionally run into the sort of person that quizzes you about ancestry. Usually they'll take a guess like "are you Italian" and when they don't get it right away they fall back on "well what are you?". I can't recall if I've gotten this with the exact words "but where are you REALLY from?". I think I may have. For some reason this is part of some people's conversational diet. It fills the void in the same way as "so what do you do?"

I too have heard my Asian friends complain about it. I legit don't know if Asian American's actually have this nuisance worse or if they are just more aware of it. I don't even know where to find data to prove it one way or the other.

I remember seeing in one of those "The Things That Will Really Surprise Visitors About $COUNTRY" type articles for the US that in most of the world, "where are you from?", either in the sense of location or what family you come from, is one of the standard conversations openers or early topics, whereas the US is actually unusual in that you'll very often here "what do you do?" (i.e., what is your job) in that conversational position.

As far as I can tell, it’s not really true any more than in other countries.

It’s just really very hard to learn Japanese well, and also to get a good grasp on Japanese culture. The vast majority of foreigners coming to Japan never achieve fluency (from what I can tell, though if there are stats on this I’d be interested).

I've been living in Japan for 7 years. Some of my friends even longer (12+ years), fluent in Japanese, including keigo (formal/honorific speaking) and local dialects. Even if you develop some life-long friendships, you're still a gaijin. You'll always be a gaijin. ESPECIALLY when interacting with anyone outside your immediate social circle.

One friend has a half-Japanese wife and has been here about 15 years. He's finally gotten so fed up with what he feels is disrespect and alienation from a VERY large population of objectively dumber/less ambitious/less successful human beings that he's actually considering moving back to America.

One incident that set him off on a day-long tirade (he was under a LOT of stress at the time) was when he pulled up to a drive-thru to order, he made some jokes with the staff, and I'm sure the staff thought they were talking to a Japanese guy. Then he pulls up to the window....and the Japanese staff are staring at a big black Jamaican man......and they just stared, speechless...then began chatting amongst themselves about how surprised they were. They had totally forgotten their formal customs and courtesies that any service staff would say if they were interacting with a Japanese customer. He blew up, cursed them out in Japanese, demanded to see their manager, scolded the manager in Japanese, etc....

I think the only country where you can truly become not-a-foreigner are the young countries (US, Canada etc) because we simply haven't been around long enough to define our national identity on ancestry. Every other country does define itself on ancestry (some more nationalistic than others).

Don't get me wrong, your presence can become very much accepted and even appreciated, but you're always wai guo ren / gai jin. I'm struggling to think of a solid example right now.

I haven't lived in Taiwan. Do they call us laowai in Taiwan or is that just a mainland thing?

Canada is the same as the US, maybe more so. I'm guessing Australia and New Zealand are similar.

You can become a not-a-foreigner in many European countries if you are white and speak without an accent.

On the flipside, you can be classified as a foreigner even if you'd live your whole life in the country but aren't white.

It depends, many European countries are ethnically diverse enough that appropriately dressed people of many ethnicities can look like natives; on the other hand many immigrants, including very ethnically aligned ones, look like immigrants even after one or two generations.

Most Taiwanese don't consider themselves to be Chinese but I get your point. Yes it's true is most Asian countries but that's because they tend to be very racially homogenous and anyone who is not part of said group is a foreigner.

In Hong Kong, for example, every Caucasian is a gweilo (lit. ghost guy).

well since race is mostly a western construct, I suppose you mean most Asians are racially Asian. But I'm really not so sure that you can say Asia is very homogenous, culturally, ethnically, or genetically. Indeed, the issue wrt being Chinese is that the history of China is one of a enculturation into Chinese culture of a diverse set of groups throughout the mainland... where being Chinese is about acting Chinese more than it is about genetic and geographical roots.

I meant that individual Asian countries (especially in East Asia) are usually homogenous e.g. most people in Japan are Japanese, Korea Korean, China Chinese etc. So much so that often race and nationality are conflated.

A japanese guy went in France for studies. After his studies, he said he would be considered as a foreigner his whole life if he went back to work in japan.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com